In today's wireless communication systems, mobile units that are inactive/idle/dormant with respect to the radio access network (RAN) often need to be located before receiving network services. Typically, the targeted mobile will be paged and its location deduced from its page response. However, paging a mobile can involve transmitting pages in all the cells of the mobile's location area or paging zone. This practice, and its known variations, can contribute to overloading the paging channels of already congested cells. Moreover, this problem is amplified by signaling such as as short message service (SMS) signaling, which involves messaging substantially larger than pages. Thus, a need exists for an apparatus and method that reduces the cost associated with signaling mobiles across multiple cells.